Mission
by Fuujin Kishukaze
Summary: Set after "The Matrix: Reloaded". Ghost tries to talk some hope into a man who's lost it all.


"I have dreamed a dream, and now that dream has gone from me."  
  
- Morpheus, The Matrix Reloaded  
  
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Morpheus winced as he dropped onto the rooftop, half out of his muscles protesting against the shock, half because the heat of the roof threatened to scorch through his boots. He didn't have long to think about it though, because as the former captain of the Nebuchadnezzar glanced over his shoulder, he saw the Agent that had been pursuing him already in the air. In a matter of second, the deadly program would be standing next to him if he didn't move, and it was with that in mind that he broke into a run.  
  
Ten minutes ago, he, and Trinity had been trying to track down a package one of Zion's ships had left at a drop point before it had been destroyed. Morpheus had never liked the idea of drop points - it left too many windows for an Agent to go in and get whatever a ship had left - but he understood why the ship had done it. Hope. It had worked for the Osiris as a way of getting the last of their intelligence to Zion before they were destroyed, so why not try it? An emergency broadcast at least left them with something. Some chance.  
  
And, as the now-destroyed ship had wanted, Morpheus and the others had found and retrieved the package. Good, right? Here the Bringer of Dreams frowned. It would've been if the Agents hadn't been waiting for them. It had been a trap.  
  
So the two of them had fled, risking phone contact only long enough to decide where they could meet for a brief second to pass of the package. That way, the Agents had to follow the both of them unless the wanted to risk catching the wrong rebel and loosing whatever it was the ship had left. It wasn't much of a strategy, Morpheus knew this, but at least it kept all of the system's Agents from bearing down on one of them. Either way, though, the former captain of the Nebuchadnezzar had the package with him, and a handful of Agents after him.  
  
One of which, was too close for comfort.  
  
Shooting another glance over his shoulder as he ran, he never saw the window washer that was hard at work on the side of the building he was reaching the end of. When that nameless nobody's RSI shifted to that of an Agent, Morpheus was completely unaware, too busy trying to find the Agent that had been behind him. And when he turned back so he could see where he was jumping to, he found his enemy waiting for him.  
  
A cruel smile crossed the Agent's lips, and in slow motion, the sentient program's fist met Morpheus' stomach, sending the bald man flying backwards onto the cement. Seconds passed, as he worked to remind himself that his ribs weren't really broken as they felt to be, that the pain shouldn't exists. And as he managed to do so, he looked up, finding the barrel of the Agent's gun incredibly close to his head.  
  
Realization crept in hot on the heels of fear. He was dead. The Agents had won, both concerning Neo, who would probably never wake up, and concerning the package. He wouldn't fight back, not when there was nothing to hope for. Nothing. No ship. No prophecy. No anything. He was dead. And had been long before now.  
  
Looking back down, he waited for the Agent to pull the trigger. But the shot never came.  
  
"Freeze it," a voice demanded instead, from somewhere behind the sentient program. And, at the command, the Agent stopped dead in its tracks, as did everything else for as far as Morpheus could see. If it wasn't for this newcomer, this interruption, he would have been dead. Killed by an Agent in a training simulation he could have stopped at any time by speaking those simple words. A simulation. In the construct. And as his dark eyes crept up the barrel of the Agent's gun, and then beyond it to the man standing beyond the Agent, he wondered briefly if he was upset by this or relieved.  
  
"Ghost," Morpheus acknowledged, not bothering to pick himself up off the ground where the Agent had landed him.  
  
The first mate of the Logos was silent for a moment. Then, without even returning the other man's greeting, he stated, "You lack focus."  
  
A small, sardonic smile crept onto the Bringer of Dream's lips. "I lack more than that."  
  
"Philosophy teaches us that he who looses hope, looses all," Ghost shot back, tucking his hands in his pockets before moving casually around the Agent that stand frozen between the two of them. When the Nebuchadnezzar had been destroyed, and her crew had come on board, Niobe had assigned herself, him, and their operator, Sparks, on a mission. For Niobe, she had assigned herself the duty of looking after the soul survivor of the Zion massacre and Neo, and helping the infirmary staff any way she could. Sparks had been ordered to search for salvageable ships among the rubble and to make sure that Logos stayed undetected by the machines. And him? Niobe had found a very special task for him.  
  
He was to keep an eye on Morpheus. To try and bring him hope again, because as the Oracle had once said, the resistance would be lost without the former captain of the Nebuchadnezzar. And both Ghost and his captain recognized the fact that this statement was more than just an old woman's rambling. Both in the fact that the Oracle had never been wrong, and because Morpheus' company seemed to have lost the will to fight as Morpheus did. And as Link and Trinity lost hope, so did the rest of the survivors; their despair was a virus, and it was quickly infecting the rest of the crew.   
  
So, here he was, knowing full well that if the relationship between Niobe and Morpheus hadn't been so strained, it might have been her here instead of him.  
  
"And is the converse of that statement, 'he who looses all, looses hope'?" Morpheus questioned, breaking the Asian man's train of thought suddenly.  
  
"Maybe," came the reply, as Ghost took two more steps around the Agent so that he stood directly in front of the leader of the rebels. Pulling a hand out of his suit pocket, he offered it to Morpheus so that the could get himself off of the ground. The Bringer of Dreams took it without protest, and once Ghost had helped the other man up, he added, "But that doesn't mean you've lost it all."  
  
"Haven't I?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Then what do you call the destruction of my ship? What do you call the prophecy being proved a lie? What do you call the fact that even now, Neo lays in a coma, unable to wake?"  
  
"I call it bad circumstances."  
  
"Do you." The response was clipped - very uncharacteristic of the man he was talking to. Maybe the sheer hopeless had its roots in Morpheus farther than Ghost or Niobe had imagined.  
  
"I do," the white-clad man answered, although he knew the Bringer of Dreams hadn't expected him to respond. "Because if you had really lost everything, Neo wouldn't be alive in the infirmary right now. He'd be dead."  
  
"And him being in a coma is better than him being dead, how?"  
  
"Simple. He's still got a chance. If you're dead, you're dead. If you're in a coma, you can always wake up."  
  
"But even if he does wake up, what good is he? The prophecy is false."  
  
"So he was told by a machine," Ghost answered. "Machines make mistakes."  
  
"And is that something else philosophy teaches us?"   
  
"No. More like personal experience."  
  
And here, a faint smile tugged at the corner's of Morpheus' lips. Maybe Ghost was right. Maybe there still was hope. After all, like the other man had pointed out, machine's made mistakes. It was why they had all managed to escape the Matrix in the first place. Because regardless of how many calculations they could make, machines failed and made mistakes as easily as a human. And that thought brought a silver of hope back into the black man's eyes. Maybe there was something worth fighting for after all.  
  
"Why don't you go check on him?"  
  
"Perhaps I will," he responded, casting his eyes upwards towards the artificial sky.   
  
"Good," came the reply, Ghost's hand reaching into his suit pocket for his cell phone. Dialing the numbers of his ship's operator, he pressed it to his ear. "Sparks? We're done here."  
  
"Mission accomplished?" the other man inquired.  
  
Dark eyes falling on the Bringer of Dreams, who still was staring up at the sky, he nodded, well aware that Sparks couldn't see him. "Yeah. I'd say so." 


End file.
